


leech, leech, my soul's yours, parasite

by NovaeLuna



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, Body Horror, Other, Parasite!AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-23 00:29:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7459530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NovaeLuna/pseuds/NovaeLuna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The more she interacts with them, the more she knows that she's losing her most memorable traits. Rufioh steals her language. Meenah steals her ruthlessness. Her personality isn't hers alone, and those around her are leeching it away. In order to stop being their host, she consumes them first.</p><p>(ParasiticTroll!AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a short glimpse into the past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> grubs at less than one sweep old are really tiny....right?
> 
> trolls are sort of like bugs right? what if they were similar to parasitic bugs...? also i have no idea how parasites work..pls suspend disbelief.... sort of gory i guess...

A memory that is forgotten, but exists nonetheless:

At a little less than one sweep old, Damara crawls through the grasslands. Her many tiny feet gently prod at the soggy blades. When one dewy drop of water splashes her on the head, she's thrown to the ground from the impact.

Life has been short but it is pleasant enough for her. Her lusus is off somewhere, probably kneading at the patches of grass that are the most verdant- that'll be Damara's bed for tonight. Damara has to change sleeping locations every night because her lusus is nomadic, always looking for better grass to feed on. It may be tiring, for such a young grub to walk that far each day. She wouldn't trade it for the world.

The water droplet encapsulates her entire head. Looking from inside the water droplet brings new sights- stars are further apart, closer together, tilted away and towards each other. Damara watches darkness swirl about in a milky portrait above. 

That thought is interrupted by a horrifying shriek. Or rather, multiple ones. The vibrations inside the water droplet turn violent, turbulent, and Damara interprets the vibrations that are shoved at her in panicked alarm.

It takes her a few moments to shake off the water droplet, but she's already running towards the direction where she thinks her lusus is. Her mind is frantically screaming at her to find shelter under her lusus, to crawl into the warm wool and be comforted by its bleats.

To her horror, as she nears her lusus, the bleats get louder.

Something's wrong.

She stops only a few feet away. Attached to her lusus's neck is a screeching and hideous collection of teal, hairy limbs and sharp, darkened with blood fangs. Its tiny black fangs glimmer with the shine of what can only be numbing poison. The grub quickly scampers to one of the noticeable veins of the stressed animal and sinks its fangs in. An even louder bleat almost knocks Damara off of her feet. The blob of unruly hair on the grub's head digs itself into her lusus's wool, allowing the teal creature to continue to latch onto her poor lusus's throat and insert all of its poison.

Poison is running through her lusus's veins. Her lusus's pupils are dilating, its breathing heavy, and it wrecks its surrounding with the ferocity of a dying warrior. 

The grub is slightly larger than she is and infinitely stronger, but Damara is agile. The other grub won't be able to notice her sneaking up, won't have enough time to stop her from digging her own fangs and horns into its exoskeleton, ripping out its mushy guts and snapping its hairy legs off one by one. Damara has large horns for a grub; they will be enough to stop this attacker.

The body of the other grub twitches in a pool of teal blood that grows darker every second. Its head is still attached to her lusus; the grip of its hair will not loosen. Damara rushes over to her lusus, still covered in teal guts.

Her bottom lip trembles, although she is too young to actually mourn. Any logical troll would say that at this age, grubs don't have the ability to understand death. They're right, of course; Damara cannot understand the ephemeral lifespan of lusi, cannot comprehend that her lusus will be gone forever.

But she does know pain.

She shuffles closer to her lusus, tries to headbutt it awake.

Her lusus does nothing, just lying there, with its eyes closed. She watches its eyes closely, headbutts it again.  When she notices that its body is still moving up and down in breath, she relaxes a bit.

All of a sudden, she's kicked back. Damara lets out an ungodly shriek that only a distressed grub can emit as she's flung back several feet. The ground shakes urgently as Damara struggles to regain her footing. Then a large shadow looms over her and she just barely dodges a hoof.

Her lusus tries to step on her again, howling in pain and completely out of control. The grass that was supposed to be Damara's bed tonight gets trampled and Damara, not even one sweep old, scrambles to avoid the sudden and terrifying attacks that her guardian is doling out.

Damara screeches as she runs.

_"Please, please, it's me, it's me, don't hurt me please-"_

She trips over a small crack in the ground, her leg bent at an angle that the elbow joint there can't withstand. She trembles. Her lusus raises its leg and stomps down, crushing two of her legs.

Damara is scared immobile.

After what feels like a lifetime, and it may as well be one for such a young grub, her lusus moves away, content with the damage. Her lusus does not make a bed and instead trots off, too fast. It is clear that Damara is not to follow. At the tender age of a little less than one, Damara is abandoned by her guardian. She has no food. She can barely move. In a way, she is almost resigned enough to die. Looking over at the mangled corpse of the grub next to her, she has no choice.

Using her free legs, she rips off a section of the grub's still dripping guts, and devours it.

Eventually, however, she must move. She learns to walk with only four legs, manages to get herself to somewhere safe, in a forest, near a river. Near the river, she sees a still body, cold, rotting, festering. The poison got to it in the end. No matter how far it ran, it couldn't escape the parasite's attacks.

Damara, close to one sweep old, knows the rules of survival, know that she has to do everything to live, forcibly tells herself that she doesn't care.

Then, she starts digs her claws into the corpse's cheek, and starts carving off the wool. The hairs on her legs cling to the wool and it is a hard feat, separating them. But at last, Damara gets to the muscle, gets to what she needs to find. A starving grub needs to eat. She is famished, so eating the muscles on top of a corpse's two cheekbones is done in no time at all. The hollow bones are strange and unfamiliar, and that thought relaxes Damara more than anything else. It doesn't look like her lusus anymore. It just looks like food.

When day comes, she has to hide. 

Her lusus used to make a home for her every day.

Damara clings to the trachea of her dead lusus until she's done cutting off meat and figures out how to save it. Then, she hides from the sun using a bone from her lusus's festering legs. Even if her lusus doesn't want her, it has to provide for her anyway. Life isn't forgiving. Damara doesn't need to be, either.

 

* * *

 

It is a small memory. 


	2. Chapter 2

Cooperation was never supposed to be a part of troll culture. It's absent from the dangerous spiral of their horns, the sharp needles that are their hairs, to the glossy sheen of their always-extended claws. Arguments extend across the whole spectrum of troll interaction, from quadrants to predator and prey; while the ruthlessness of the latter is indisputable, the former isn't always as clear-cut.

Damara has concluded this, about the former: trolls require the quadrants to reproduce, but end up devouring their own young upon encounter. She has seen many a grub get swallowed by a same color adult; compassion does not survive in a world like this. Groups never go well; unless a hierarchy is established, trolls will claw and bash each other to death before the sun rises. 

Knowing this, if she wants to survive in any kind of society, she needs to establish aggression.

Horns are the ultimate status symbol in a young troll, before their eye color sets in. Damara's are impressive in size, but the moment she enters the Lost Weeaboos, its their shape that immediately anoint her as dangerous. Now three sweeps old and not a grub, she long-ago hollowed out the ram horns of her lusus and reamed her own into them. She painstakingly ensured their growth would be even and as dangerous as possible.

Because as terrible a hindrance as it is, she's slender and agile- strength isn't her strong suit. However, she finds her horns are especially impressive, especially for a blood as low as hers. It was hard to encounter trolls horns her size in East Beforan, where she traipsed upon countless miles of multi-colored grub husks.

It'd do good to cultivate them, she had realized about a sweep ago. So, similar to forcing hedges to grow into a sphere or a pyramid, she had filed away at bits of her horns and forced them to grow into a deadly, royal shape.

According to the Lost Weeaboos, only highbloods have the luxury of developing especially intricate and pointed horns. They had immediately bowed down to her; they envied her place of origin and with those horns, anyone would think she had more power than she really had.

It is there that she meets Rufioh, horns large but uncultivated. She sees them, impressive, glinting in the light, and wonders how deadly hers must look if he gives up power to her. His hair glints deadly in the sun, dyed red with some artificial dye. Bold. He is not afraid to fight, she knows. It'd do good to have him as an ally.

* * *

 

Except-

He isn't afraid of her. The Lost Weeaboos all stare at her with a mixture of admiration and fear that makes her shiver down to her bones. They're mostly all so much older than her. Living their lives peacefully. Assholes when it comes to worshiping everything East Beforan and not understanding the problems of East Beforan, but for the most part, relatively unassuming. Almost unnerving compared to what she's experienced before, where she's had to pluck out eyeballs from sockets using the hairs on her legs because she's afraid of seeing their eye color, where she's even had to devour her own lusus.

He stays with her, even tries to help her. When she starts chirping because she can't find her way in the forest, he's the one who finds her. When she can't hunt her own food, he shares his portion with her. Even though he can't understand her and she can't understand him, he still chirps and gestures animatedly in front of her and waits for her to get it. Rufioh is everything a good friend could be.

And that's why she's wary of him.

But a sweep goes by and Rufioh is still sweet, and has gotten even closer to her. Since Damara's never had much contact with others in East Beforan before someone's died, she's taken on the accent of the Lost Weeaboos, adjusting her previously accurate chirps to more rounded, elongated chirps that never had a place in the Eastern language. She's completely absorbed by their group, and as time goes on, she and Rufioh become able to understand each other, even.

Then, one day, she and Rufioh returns to a bloodied camp.

The Lost Weeaboos dangle from odd places in the camp. A jade is lacerated multiple through her left arm, left dangling on a rotting branch by a necklace made from the bones of her dead lusus. A teal's throat cavity is shown in its entirety; the bones from his last meal jutting out from his lower stomach. A tiny two sweep old, just older than a grub, has a head that's across the camp from her body.

Complete and brutal torture.

No savage creature would ever take a life that way. They'd have to be adult trolls, from the pure strength needed to overpower so many young trolls.

Rufioh covers Damara's eyes when he finally registers what happens. She can hear the blood rushing through his veins, the heavy patter thud against her chest. This is horrifying to him, and his first reaction is to shield her from what is happening.

It's nothing new to her, this death business, although for some horrible reason, she's still glued to the floor where she stands. She's seen death before. Yet.

She leans back, softly, and lets Rufioh listen her unsteady beat, lets him feel how she's shaking, lets him cry into her hair. Behind his hands, she cries. She turns around, making sure that his arms still block her sight, until she's facing his tall, sturdy chest, and clings onto him. Her leg hairs cling to him desperately, and in the back of her mind she's aware of what a mess she's being, but then she feels his own leg and arm hairs cling to her too.

There they stand, matesprits together in tragedy.

When they finally come apart, she understands what need to be done. 

Rufioh is ready to leave after a day; he's packed all his things, gotten all of his possession, brought all the regular food they have. He waits outside the camp for her as she finds what she wants to carry with her.

She doesn't want him to see her like this.

She rips off the particularly nice horns from the corpses left behind, takes the high-quality weapons from their pockets, and tears off tiny bits of flesh that'll hopefully serve as food in case of emergency. She would rip out their eyeballs to detach herself from the fact that she knew them, but there's something cool and empty about doing that to your dead...friends. She leaves with the most perfect steaks she's ever cut, still soaked with teal and indigo and jade and bronze. It's safe to say that Rufioh will never find them. He can have his servings of food, and she can have hers.

There's something akin to shame, once long gone, that now thrashes inside of her.

If they left even two days earlier, the meat would still be thrashing as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in my mind damara has these huge elegant and curving horns....i love damara too much... why does no one love her... her story is so tragic.....
> 
> also damara/rufioh isnt tagged because it isnt endgame, as the story summary implies. if anyone wants me to tag it im a-okay with it!! just hmu
> 
> ALSO ITS ONLY LOVE WHEN YOU ENTWINE YOUR LEG HAIRS WITH THEM LMFAOOO


End file.
